I'm Sorry ... I'll not read that again

It only goes to show that I was wise to fight shy of clearing the study, and not purely lazy because, now that I have started, I am shivery with the ghosts of my past.
For I have delved deep into a dusty old box, stinking of mildew, and which contains diaries and letters from my teenage years.

What very dull reading they make and what a big mistake to open any sort of trapdoor to your youth. I do not feel richer for going there.

Laid bare are the insipid thoughts of an idiot which should have passed straight from pen to page to bin. And possibly bypassed pen and page altogether. Just think, I could have spent even more time watching TV and washing my hair, 2 things I blink to see that I did almost to the utter neglect of anything else and which is at complete odds with the flavour which a marinade of time had falsely given my memory of childhood. Such compelling proof to the contrary is most unpleasant.

Much of it, I found with a hearty dollop of relief, is hard to read, tight scrawls within thinly spaced lines: I did not persevere. Enough is all too legible.
What emerges instead of the rather sweet, thoughtful, shy girl I fondly recall is a picture of a desperately tedious person almost willing herself to miss opportunities, to pass up the chance of a good time who, despite being asked here and there often enough, blandly failed to “bother” for no good reason beyond vacant idleness.
New experiences registered not on my radar, instead I seemed to think it worthy of remark to record that I watched the television, that I did some more patchwork, or bought some wool (“33p, half price, v g deal. V pleased.” – the creative tycoon in me alive then, kicking and fighting to get out. Goodoh.)
It strikes me that I passed my peak years knitting a jumper and the only mercy is that the details of this grim garment have been stricken from my memory by some charitable god of amnesia. Nor was there then this insatiable need, or digital ability, to photograph each and everything that happened so that hideous pully (for hideous we can safely bet it was) is one thing that can happily be consigned to the realms of the past, certainly a place where I did things differently. If I could be arsed, that is.

No wonder I’m not famous.

What sort of grounding was this endless round of buying pencils from Harold Hockey, and totting up my miserable money to the penny (“my interest came today, £29.73. I was v pleased.”) The days flooded back to reveal an introspective, petty, boring creature whose sum of each day was to list with obsessive enthusiasm what chocolate she had eaten, what homework done, how v annoying someone had been – generally my best friends, for whom continual scorn is reserved, (“L so selfish … ‘Wakey Wakey’ she shouted, ‘Zappo party.’ ZAPPO! Her word!! … She was wearing blue eyeshadow!” Clearly about as bad as it got.)
While actually at school an uneasy fixation develops as to how many “free” periods I had in a day, granting me time which I can guarantee was not wisely spent but in a flurry of disapproving inactivity.

My inability to sort chaff and wheat is exemplified by this sort of entry:
“Today is Sunday July 13” well, durr, the printed page tells me that.
Or this:
“Saw film but didn’t follow it”
Or the thrilling news that:
“I made a n.v.n. [= not very nice] apple pie”

The fuckwittery continues, “Today we bought a new puppy we’re going to call him Harry. He’s v sweet ... We don’t know what to call the puppy. v sweet. Saw TV.”

Endless stuff like this, eating up my youth, stretching over several months.
Mapping the whole of one summer is a lamentable level of interest in a waste disposal unit my parents were buying. They would feel sorry for me did they but know. I feel sorry for me now that I do. On and on about its non-arrival, and then its arrival, and its stashing by the piano, then it being moved to the hall and then, oh giddy day, fly the banners and be still my beating heart: its installation.

True, a typical 70s/80s childhood where children were kept in their place (that place being busy with shampoo in my case) did not heave with opportunity to uncover useful things to teach the world. The concept of teenager was most certainly not encouraged (at least not in our house). I think I was 23 before I realised I could have been really badly behaved – maybe skipped a hair washing? turned down a session tidying my room? Steady on now old girl.
My parents were interesting and achieving, but whatever horizons I was given, I lowered the blind further still. Not for me the sneering lip and the fag in the shed, nor the furious slamming of doors. Well, I was too busy with my patchwork. No, about as wild as I got was being asked to a disco. Which I tended not to go to as “couldn’t be bothered. V cold today.” I did at least think to note that one May 5th it snowed which is about the only episode of lasting mark that year.

Yet when something beyond “had fish and chips” happens, do I rise to the challenge? Of course not. Here I find, after turning to the date in question with trembling fingers – so upset have I remembered being – to the death of my childhood dog. Is my misery laid bare? Are tender poignant thoughts strewn across the page rich in raw adolescent pain? No. Don’t be silly. I read this: “Nan (dog) dying of cancer. V sad. My new desk arrived.”
Even when the beast finally kicked the bucket, the passion still fails to fly from the page. I am at pains instead to record that I had a scotch egg for supper.

My strange value system is further revealed in my attitude to the little girl next door who still bears the scar, I know,of the following accident, but do I care? Not terribly, it seems. “P slipped while playing and fell through a spike on railings outside Brownies. It punctured her skin – 4 stitches, but not her uniform.” Well thank God for that.

Interestingly (the word is obviously used advisedly, and this is mere grasping at straws) my diaries are a tiny bit more characterful when I was 13 or 14. But come 15 and 16 woeful dullness was well and truly entrenched.
At some stage I am forced to look beyond my teeny tiny scope and notice the doings of others, beyond which they merely impinged on me for being “v irritating.” Of exam results – and this is in an age when a clutch of 14 A*s were not de rigeurly handed out in recompense for the student happening to amble over to the exam hall – there is an occasion when I hear that my friend’s sister managed a C a D and an O for her ‘A’ levels while another scrapped 2 Cs and an E. Hardly stellar even then, and not much payback for several years’ private education, but I am surprisingly jocular, “Congratulations all round!” I boomed.
I fear that I might even have cracked open a can of Coke to mark the event.

I can only t’ank feck that I did not wear a beret, and that there are no poems. Sometimes the past should just stay in a box. If you are tempted to revisit your ghosts, I can only advise that you think again. Step away, do not look back. We mature for good reason and snipping the ties is no bad thing.
But sadly the child maketh the adult, history repeats itself and I fear that I am fundamentally exactly the same quarter of a century on. That given time all over again I would plod the same dull path - how very Ouspensky of me. The subject matter has shifted slightly, it's called responsibility, so my spotlight has merely swivelled from hair-washing to Dyson, from scotch egg to dog lampshade. Plus ca change.
How v annoying. E went out. I couldn't be bothered. Read. Watched TV. Bed.